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3 Ways the Love of Mobile Devices Will Change IT Best Practices

2015 is the year that Canadians really became mobile surfers

Well, it looks like we’ve reached a really big tipping point in Canada! According to comScore, Canadians are now using mobile devices (i.e., mobile phones and tablets) more often than their computers to surf the web! Granted, the advantage is slight at the moment – the ratio of mobile surfers to desktop surfers is only 51% to 49%. That said, context is key.

More to the point, with 5% of Canadians using only mobile devices for all their computing needs, and the massive preference of younger web surfers to use mobile devices over desk-bound (or even lap-bound) computers, mobile computing is going to keep on outpacing more “traditional” computer use!

What does this new surfing behaviour mean for IT best practices (and businesses in general)?

At its core, the changing mobile surfing habits means that companies will have to take a very hard look at how they engage customers going forward. And I don’t mean from just a marketing point of view either. Our love of mobile gadgets will impact nearly all aspects of doing business in the coming years.

1.Your offerings will have to be mobile friendly.

Most companies (and especially those that sell services) will have to figure out just how they’re going to cater to clients who use their mobile gadgets for everything. Now, I can’t speak to every possible strategy, but I can identify a key element in what needs to be done: One of the most crucial aspects in all this is that companies will have to put more resources into making mobile apps that offer their unique services (or which, at the very least, provide useful information to customers).

Total apps sales over the lifetime of the iTunes store is $25 billion (it opened in 2003);

$10 billion of that came just from 2014 – iTunes broke records last year;

The first week of January 2015 saw revenues of nearly $500 million in iTunes apps.

Greater numbers of people are using apps as a supplement to desktop programs or to replace them altogether. And this is just at the start of these devices taking a dominant position. What it will be like when smartphones and tablets (or even newer form factors) become the only thing that most people use?

For the folks in IT, this growing number of apps represents a new challenge as well. IT best practices will have to go past taking care of software licenses for a (relatively) small number of programs to having to manage many, many hordes of apps. And that’s only for the “official” company-approved apps. Dealing with unauthorized ones will be a whole other story (I’ll get to that soon, since this ties in with the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend).

Now, there’s still a lot of money going toward this type of marketing, but things have changed. It’s now really, really, really cheap to put out all of kinds of information and offers to just about everyone, so long as they have an internet connection (i.e., most people on the planet).

Before, the limited ad space really meant that, as long as an ad managed to get displayed in that space, there was a good chance it’d be seen. Now, there’s now so many ads and marketing information out there that people tune things out as a matter of course. Firms compete for attention now – not ad space!

What that means is that traditional marketing will have to make way for something called “inbound marketing”. To make a long story short, traditional marketing is “outbound” – products or services are pushed onto potential clients. “Inbound” marketing, on the other hand, earns people’s interest and attention as a way of attracting buyers to the marketed good or service.

In more concrete terms, this means that businesses will have to have very good online presence that’s made up of helpful content which will pull in customers. Even more to the point, companies will have to work hard to create and deliver marketing content that will be easily consumed from smartphones and the like. That’s why firms like Mobilewalla (a company whose only purpose is to send targeted ads to mobile phones and devices) have risen in stature in recent years.

3.You’re going to have to secure BYOD more than ever.

Going back to the IT challenge, the massive increase in mobile adoption also means that more workers than ever are bringing in unauthorized devices into the workplace to help them do their job. This also means that there will be much more bring-your-own-app (BYOA) issues for companies to manage.

Henry is a dedicated technical writer, focused on conducting market research, contributing to product design, and writing clear and concise documentation for the company. He is an enthusiastic team member and is passionate about science and technology, who plays a key role in Cimpl’s product messaging. His dedication to writing is reflected in his experience in authoring academic papers, documentation, user guides, and in contributing to Cimpl’s marketing efforts.

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